A Theory of Cronuts: How Hybrid Foods Have Conquered the American Mind

First there were Doritos Locos Tacos, then the Cronut, and now the Ramen Burger. If you look at the recent history of food-related stories that have transcended the small sliver of the sandbox we called the food world, it’s not hard to see a trend: The reign of the Frankenfood is in full effect. How did a pastry at a small shop in Soho, produced in quantities of just 300 a day, make it to heights of the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and the spare seat on Heidi Klum’s private jet? And how did a taco inside a Doritos shell sell more than half a billion units in a year?

It’s easy to say “media hype” and move on, but as always, that’s only part of the story. The obsession with culinary hybrids reflects something much deeper about the way we think about food, not to mention our broader cultural values.

To figure out what that might be, let’s investigate exactly why America can’t get stop freaking out over mashup foods.

Mashup foods are just like mashup songs, which everyone loves for a reason.

Most modern cooking is an endless process of culinary sampling, and as such, is a lot like rap music, with chefs sifting through recipes like a producer digging in the crates. You take a little French technique, some flavor profiles from Southeast Asia, an homage to a famous dish, and a bit of inspiration from your maternal grandmother, then mix that all up with some swag sauce that marks it as your own. Momofuku and Yeezus were built the same way, taking bits and pieces from different sources and weaving them into something novel—maybe you know the source material, maybe you don't, but you're mostly focused on the new sound.
Yet while Kanye is certainly popular, nothing he ever does could possibly be as popular as Glee mashups. Why? Because that satisfying "Aha" moment that all humans yearn for is instantaneous in a mashup song—as an overt hybrid, it elicits that satisfying "I know this!" feeling, rather than the more complicated, "This kind of reminds me of…". The latter requires some engagement from the listener; the former simple bulldozes its way into your mind and stays there.
At his bakery, Dominique Ansel has a pastry called the Paris New York, which is his take on the classic French dessert called Paris–Brest, filtered through his love of Snickers Bars. It is every bit as Instagram-worthy as the Cronut, and it is packed with flavors—like peanut butter and salted caramel—that are just as familiar. Yet unless you did a little digging, you might never know any of this. It's the pastry equivalent of a Kanye song that samples a bunch of artists and genres without overtly referencing any of them.
The Cronut, meanwhile, is the Glee cast singing the lyrics to "Start Me Up" to the tune of "Livin' on a Prayer." You don't need to know anything about cooking or food history or Dominique Ansel's biography to "get" a Cronut, in the same way that you don't need to know anything about music to want to sing and dance to this song:

Mashups foods are the memes of the culinary world.

As much as food has ingrained itself in pop culture, few of us engage in conversations about it without sounding awkward. Even as a food writer, I feel this way all the time—it's tough to discuss why certain dishes are good and certain dishes are bad without eliciting eye rolls. Maybe it's because culinary lingo hasn't yet ingrained itself into the lexicon as much as we might think. Either way, it can create an unbreachable gap between those who call themselves "foodies," and those who think foodies are insufferable idiots.
Mashups are fun because they make food easy to understand and talk about—they are gastro-memes, breezily explained across Instagram, Facebook, and the bar without having to say much beyond, "It's a pizza with hamburgers stuffed INSIDE the crust!" Or, alternatively, "Nom nom nom."
Even if we disagree about their merit, mashup foods are something we can all talk about. Which brings me to my next point...

Mashups foods are tailor-made for debate and controversy.

When we can all talk about something, it means we can all yell at each other about it. That's key. Mashup foods are basically a canvas for three types of arguments that people love to have:

The "which is better?" argument. A mashup food, by its definition, involves two or more foods that, 99% of the time, are already popular. It's a conversation starter on a plate: Which is better, hot dogs or pretzels? Croissants or doughnuts? A grilled cheese or mozzarella sticks? Folks from both camps can all gather around to ogle the latest hybrid monstrosity and yell at each other.

Class/intellectual warfare. Sometimes, an everyman street-food dish gets mashed up with a haute-cuisine dish (see: Daniel Boulud's foie-gras hamburger), offering a perfect opportunity for people to fight about matters of taste. Similar, as is the the case of the Ramen Burger, people get to soapbox about "authenticity," which often involves thinly veiled classist arguments that boil down to, "I know what's authentic because I am more educated than you."

The hype debate. We all know that hype is a renewable resource, feeding on itself then regenerating new, more grotesque limbs right in front of your eyes. Mashup foods attract hype for reasons already mentioned. Hype causes people to argue about why there is hype. Seeing people argue about the hype attracts attention. And on and on it goes.

Related to that last part is the inevitable argument among those who like to intellectualize these things about what it all means. Optimists believe that mashups are a gateway drug to intellectual curiosity and good taste—they hope the Cronut can lead eaters to Dominique Ansel's more traditional French pastries, in the same way that the Glee soundtrack might inspire a youngster to learn about Motown because, you know, that old song they mashed up with Lady Gaga was really cool. Pessimists believe that mashups dumb down the source material irredeemably.
The fact that we can fight about all this endlessly is another reason why mashups win, and why the media will always play into the hype.

We love puns and catchy names.

From the Cuisinart to the Beanie Baby, it's impossible to discuss American consumerism without acknowledging the tremendous power of product names. In today's social-media driven marketplace, that power is even more palpable—a clever name doubles as a clever hashtag, which further boosts the thing's viral potential.
Mashup foods lend themselves naturally to a great portmanteau, though that's not to say that picking the perfect name doesn't require some savvy. Would the Crunchwrap Supreme have been as big of a hit for Taco Bell if it had been called the Origami Tostada? Likely not. And if the Cronut had been christened with any of the names that grace its many knockoffs—doissant, French donut, New York pie donut, Cro-Do—I'm 95% sure that line wouldn't be as long as it is. If Don Draper were available for comment, he'd surely agree.

Mashups foods are creatively in step with contemporary pop culture.

It's getting a little tired to bemoan the "end of creativity," but only because it's so uncomfortably true—or at least the subtext of that statement is pretty on point. What people mean when they say creativity is dead is not that really that nothing is creative, but rather that nothing is entirely original. Across all disciplines—music, art, film, fiction, etc.—creators and consumers suffer from a glut of information. Rather than sitting alone with their thoughts, people today are forced to reckon with the entire history of human imagination at their fingertips, and it's stifling.
Few but the most fearless can tackle the question, "How can I do something entirely new and different?" It's far easier to say, "What do I like, and how can I filter those things through my unique perspective?" As a result, pastiche is the dominant art form of our time, and the food world is no exception. Like Shepard Fairey's iconic Obama image, mashup foods have the ability to ignite popular interest in the way that the avant-garde never will.